Scientifi c Methods 331the Library of Congress (http: // catalog.loc .gov / ), Periodical Contents Index (recently
renamed Periodicals Index Online) (http: // pio .chadwyck.co .uk / ), and the catalog of
the contents of the New York Times, offered by Proquest Historical Newspapers (http: //
www .proquest .com / products_pq / descriptions / pq- hist- news .shtml). I performed all
these searches between May and June 2004. The fi rst two were on “scientifi c method”
in titles. The third was on “scientifi c method” in the full text of articles. In all cases,
I divided each result by the total number of items about science indexed in the given
database to gain a better image of the relative prominence of scientifi c method as an
aspect of science talk.
- John Schuster and Richard Yeo, introduction to Politics and Rhetoric of Scientifi c
Method (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986), xi; Joan G. Creager, Paul G. Jantzen, and James L.
Mariner, Biology (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 40. - Hillier Kreighbaum, Science; Who Gets What Science News—the News, Where They
Get It, What They Think About It—and the Public (New York: New York University Press,
1958), 183. - Stanley Jevons, Principles of Science (London: Macmillan and Co., 1874), vii.
- Stuart Rice, introduction to Methods in Social Science (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1931), 5. - Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York,
1976), 17. - Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1999); Thomas F. Gieryn, “Boundary- Work and the Demarcation of Science
from Non- Science,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 781–95; Thomas F. Gieryn,
“Boundaries of Science,” in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Shiela
Jasonoff et al. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), 393–443. In many ways,
the phrase “scientifi c method” resembles the “boundary objects” of Susan Leigh Star
and James R. Griesemer in their ability to present different meanings and aspects for
several people or groups at one time; see Star and Greisemer, “Institutional Economy,
‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum
of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39,” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387–420. - “Scientifi c Method,” Wikipedia, http: // en.wikipedia .org / wiki / Scientifi c_method
(accessed September 21, 2006). - See Daniel Patrick Thurs, Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American
Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007). - This data was gathered from an online database called Making of America in
August 2000. The periodicals indexed include Ladies Repository, Debow’s Agricultural
Review, Princeton Review, Southern Quarterly Review, Southern Literary Messenger, Overland
Monthly, Catholic World, and Appleton’s Scientifi c Monthly (see http: // www .moa.umdl
.umich .edu). - For a general methodological overview see Laurens Laudan, “Theories of Scien-
tifi c Method from Plato to Mach,” History of Science 7 (1968): 1–63; and Barry Gower,
Scientifi c Method (London: Routledge, 1997). On the scientifi c revolution, see Steven
Shapin, The Scientifi c Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). - Laurens Laudan, “Theories of Scientifi c Method,” 30–32; see also Larry Laudan,
Science and Hypothesis (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1981); Gower, Scientifi c Method, 109–29;
Richard Yeo, Defi ning Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge, and Public Debate in